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"What matters is attitude": the agency in the age of automation.


Communication is changing due to increasing automation. Prof. Dr. Fleck deals with the future prospects of the industry.

Perhaps a future with robotic humans and cloning, as depicted in the 1982 film Blade Runner, is overstated. In fact, however, some aspects can be deduced from it that are already valid today on the level of our media system. This is likely to change the work of media creators, but also of communication agencies, in the coming years. At the Communicators training day in early June, Prof. Dr. Matthes Fleck presented his research on "Agencies in the age of automation". The combination of the terms communication work and automation often ends up in fears of losing one's job: will agencies even be needed in the future, if all communication is automated? And what does this automation involve?


Three levels of automation

In the field of communication, the phenomenon can easily be divided into three levels. Firstly, intellectual goods such as text, images and sound can now be created by computers. The possibilities are still limited, but are becoming more and more comprehensive. Already today, for example, data on particulate matter measurements can be translated into simple texts using control systems.

The second level concerns data collection and evaluation. Based on behaviour patterns collected on the Internet, an enthusiastic cyclist will receive different advertisements than a dog lover. It can be expected that on the third level, all communication will be automated from start to finish in the future. The best way to illustrate this is with an example. If Mr. Meier needs a new haircut, software in his calendar checks the availability of his preferred hairdresser, books an appointment accordingly, calculates the travel time based on traffic data and orders a taxi at the right time. Parts of this fully automated communication are already reality.


What's changing?

Based on such future prospects, a change in communication activities can be expected. "I think that data analysis will become more and more important." In contrast, the mere "making" of communication, such as news generation and other editorial activities, should no longer be the main activity of an agency. In the future, it will increasingly use rule systems to convert large data sets into text and actions in order to reach the target audience. The challenge will then be to use these data sets skilfully for sponsoring, information, advertising or marketing. A tendency towards automation can also be observed in the computer-aided expansion or modification of texts (known as augmentation in technical jargon). What translation tools such as Deepl, for example, already do today could be further developed by adapting certain types of formulation specifically to stakeholders. In such a scenario, the editor would be offered one or the other text module depending on the mandate.


First of all, an attitude is needed

Much of this is still too far away - but it will come. Fleck therefore advises to keep a close eye on the current dynamics. "It will be a matter of developing an attitude before the algorithm is ready." The basic question here is: Which work is still worth doing by a human and which is not. Is that a question we should be afraid of? Aren't we rather glad that we don't have to write 2000 reports on particulate matter every day? As humans, we will concentrate more on tasks that require creativity and originality - we will leave everything repetitive to machines, algorithms and robots. How agencies react to these developments is likely to have a significant impact on their success in the future.


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Prof. Dr. Matthes Fleck is Professor of Journalism and Business Administration at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts with a focus on digital business models and online communication. In 2019, he also took over as head of the Institute for Communication and Marketing in Lucerne. He is currently working on the study "Media and advertising agencies today and in the future - a study from the customer's point of view".

Published on 18. October 2019 by Maurice Desiderato
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